Every step you take in life, even if it’s misstep, is important to getting you closer to success. Here are ten testimonies from people who were brave enough to fail and know that it is worth it.

Michael Jordan – “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Albert Einstein – “I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”

Ronald Reagen – “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

J.K. Rowling – “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”

Mark Zuckerberg – “The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

Calvin Coolidge – “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

Thomas Edison – “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”

Bill Gates – “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

Ira Glass – “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. You gotta know it’s normal.”

Teddy Roosevelt – “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

Remember next time you’re down, that if you are brave enough to get back up and put yourself out there again, you will be better than before you fell.